


Love at first bark

by spectralarchers



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Gen, Tumblr Prompt, nicky adopts a dog, stray dog
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:35:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26532964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spectralarchers/pseuds/spectralarchers
Summary: @Solrosan on Tumblr prompted me: "Name the puppy you know Joe gets for Nicky when they take a decade long break from the guard."
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 4
Kudos: 72





	Love at first bark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [solrosan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/solrosan/gifts).



> It was supposed to be a short answer and it turned into a short fic instead. 
> 
> Unbeta'd, all mistakes are my own.

Joe and Nicky didn’t exactly count on taking a break from the Old Guard, but after Andy had gotten injured in their last mission and had needed hospitalization for a longer period of time, well... Nile had told them to take a break for a year or two, just enough time for Andy to get through rehabilitation and get her strength back.

(It had sucked to watch her in the hospital bed, pale and weak, her who had always been worthy of the Old Gods).

But, nonetheless, Joe and Nicky have found themselves in a little seaside villa near the French Riviera town Cagnes-sur-Mer in southeastern France. Mostly because, as Joe had put it “Anything but Nice or Cannes, please!” when they had been looking for something near the Mediterranean, and Nicky had said “Nothing in Italy, please!” so they’d found a solution that fit both of them.

* * *

There was lots of beaches they could take long walks on when the sun was beginning to set, there wasn’t too far up to the mountains (they liked to go into the mountains to the little town of Lucéram, which has many ecclesiastical and medieval monuments and altarpieces of Ludovico Brea, an Italian painter of the Renaissance, who came from Nicky’s native Genoa).

It was during one of their walks down the seaside, a quiet August evening, that they’d first seen the dog. It had been following them for a little while, and when they’d decided to cross the asphalt between the beach and the little seaside restaurants, they’d had to stop and make sure the dog didn’t get hit by a car as it followed them. It disappeared while they were having dinner at the Restaurant L'Azur, a Brasserie whose owner they’d grown fond of during their first nights here.

(The owner had taken them as tourists who were here for the summer, and they’d appreciate that nobody was asking questions whenever they came in every single night for their dinner).

The next night, as they’re walking past the beach again, and up to the Restaurant L’Azur to get their usual dinner, they see the sandy grey colored dog sitting by the pedestrian crossing, tongue lolling and eyes scanning people walking past her, the dog’s head following the scent of people as they go by. Nicky sees the dog first, pointing at it with a finger. Joe lets go of Nicky’s hand as the dog’s ears perk up towards them and it closes its mouth, expectant.

“Are you waiting for us?” Nicky asks in French with the slightest Italian accent (he’d never get completely rid of it), and the dog’s tail starts wagging. Looking left and right before crossing over to the side of the restaurant and towards the dog, Joe and Nicky look up at one of the waitresses from the restaurant who is looking down at them. She shakes her hands visibly.

“We tried to get her to leave, but she just came back to sit right there. Christopher considered calling the SPA*, but I said to wait until you came back, she seems to like you two,” the girl said, before turning back towards the table she had been supposed to wait on. Nicky stops up in front of the dog - _she_ \- and smiles as she opens her mouth and her tail starts wagging a little bit more enthusiastically. 

“So, what do you-”

“No, Nicky, I know that look, we’re not-”

“But, she’s been waiting for us, Joe. We can’t leave her here.”

Joe sometimes wishes Nicky didn’t have the bluest puppy eyes himself, because half of the time, Nicky only gets away with things because he has eyes as blue as the clearest ocean. How could he resist them?

“Fine. We’ll go to a vet and see if she’s chipped, okay?”

The dog must figure out that something is happening concerning her, because she lifts her head as they both walk up the little steps to the restaurant and find their usual table. She tentatively stops at the entrance to the terrace, only too aware that she’s usually not welcome. Nicky exchanges a glance with the waitress - Virginie - who nods. Nicky, tapping his thigh and calling on to her, motions the dog towards their table. It takes her a couple of minutes and a couple of different languages to get her to lie down at their feet.

* * *

“So, she’s not chipped. What do you want to call her?” the officer from the veterinary says as they’ve brought the dog in for a check-up. She’s looked everywhere for the little subcutaneous microchip, but there hasn’t been any response to it. “I have to sign her up in our system, check if she’s gotten all her vaccines and all that,” the clerk continues.

Joe looks over at Nicky. “It’s your dog, you decide.”

Nicky, shrugging, holding a newly bought leash in his one hand, the dog at the other end of it in a nice blue collar, looks over at the clerk, before looking back at Joe. “I mean, we found her as we were walking under moonlight,” he starts, and Joe can feel it coming from a mile away.

“Luna would be a good name,” he says in Italian, and the clerk understands the name without asking, because she starts typing it in, after repeating it.

* * *

“How the hell could she not know that we meant Luna, as in the moon, and not... Loonna? It sounds like the Oompa Loompa’s little sister or something,” Joe says, as they’re walking down the beach again, Loonna on the end of her leash, apparently happy and satisfied with herself.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so the Restaurant d’Azur is a real place, and [Loonna is a real dog](https://spa-montpellier.org/animal-adoption/loonna-85655/), up for adoption at the Société Protectrice des Animaux of Montpellier in France. I got utterly uninspired and decided to go look for a real animal instead of making one up :) 
> 
> Find me on [tumblr](https://spectralarchers.tumblr.com/) ♥


End file.
